Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lindsay, Alexander (d.1646)
LINDSAY, ALEXANDER, second Lord Spynie (d. 1646), was the eldest son of Alexander, first lord Spynie [q. v.], by his wife Jean Lyon. He was still a minor at the time of his father's murder in 1607; but when, in 1609, the trial of his father's murderer was not proceeded with on account of the absence of a prosecutor, a protest was made on his behalf and that of the other infant children that their ultimate right of prosecution should not be invalidated. Spynie, however, after he came of age, agreed to waive his right of prosecution, on Lindsay of Edzell, the murderer, affirming ‘by his great aith’ that the slaughter was accidental, and undertaking to pay a sum of eight thousand merks, and make over to him and his sister the lands of Garlobank, Perthshire. Edzell, on 7 March 1617, obtained a remission for the slaughter under the great seal.
Spynie was one of the Scottish lords who attended the funeral of James I in Westminster Abbey in 1625 (Balfour, Annals, ii. 118). On 2 June 1626 he was made commander-in-chief in Scotland for life. Having raised a regiment of three thousand foot for the king of Denmark (ib. p. 154), he served with distinction under Gustavus Adolphus. In 1628 he threw himself into Stralsund, then held by Sir Alexander Leslie [q. v.] against Wallenstein, and rendered him aid of prime importance, his regiment being chosen to make a sally against an attacking party of the enemy, which drove them back on the main body. After his return to Scotland, his appointment as commander-in-chief was confirmed 28 June 1633.
In the dispute with the covenanters, Spynie supported the king. He joined Montrose at Perth after the battle of Tippermuir in September 1644 (Spalding, Memorialls, ii. 404), and with him on the 14th entered Aberdeen (ib. p. 408), but when Montrose two days afterwards vacated the city he was taken prisoner, and finally sent south to Edinburgh (ib. pp. 410, 416). He died in March 1646.
He married first, Joanna Douglas, and secondly, Lady Margaret Hay, only daughter of George, first earl of Kinnoul [q. v.] By his first wife he had no issue, but by his second he had two sons—Alexander, master of Kinnoul, and George, who succeeded him as third lord—and two daughters: Margaret, married to William Fullarton of Fullarton, and Anne, who died unmarried.
[Pitcairn's Criminal Trials; Balfour's Annals; Spalding's Memorialls; Monro's Expedition with the worthy Scotch Regiment (1637); Lord Lindsay's Lives of the Lindsays; Jervise's Lands of the Lindsays; Lindsay Pedigree, by W. A. Lindsay, in the College of Arms; Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), ii. 518.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.182
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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